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4 Études, Op 4

Introduction

Szymanowski’s Four Études, Op 4, were composed between 1900 and 1902. Before his Warsaw studies Szymanowski had attended the music school of his father’s cousin, Gustav Neuhaus, at Elisavetgrad, in what is now Ukraine. He dedicated these pieces to Tala (Natalia) Neuhaus, a lifelong friend. The harmonic and melodic inflections of early Scriabin are especially noticeable in the first Étude, in E flat minor, though not the distilled, evanescent brevity also characteristic of him. The second Étude, in G flat major, simultaneously divides groups of six semiquavers into subsets of both two and three to create an Escher-like, dizzying sense of conflicting perceptions. The B flat minor third Étude, which in posterity has achieved some independent fame, presents a sorrowful cantilena above slow repeating chords, rising to an imposing climactic restatement of the principal idea before reaching a sombre but subdued conclusion. The last Étude of the group offers a tantalizing glimpse of a far more tangential approach to tonality, juxtaposing hints of C major and A flat minor at the outset and launching without preamble into a restless discourse marked by obsessive repetition of short melodic motifs against a backdrop of triplet quavers. Eventually the fires burn themselves out, however, and with final calm comes unequivocal affirmation of C major as the sovereign key.

Recordings

In Cédric Tiberghien’s first solo recording for Hyperion he embraces the sensual, crepuscular sound-world of Szymanowski’s most celebrated piano works, Masques, Métopes and the complete Études. Tiberghien’s expressive, quicksilver playing makes hi ...» More

'Will afford delight as well as discovery … this disc surpasses any earlier commercial recordings of Szymanowski’s music I have heard' (Gramophone)'This disc surpasses any earlier commercial recordings of Szymanowski'smusic I have heard … will afford delight as well as discovery' (Gramophone)» More

Details

The Four Etudes, Opus 4, date from Szymanowski’s early student days in Warsaw (1900/02), when his piano music responded above all to Chopin. Yet we need only hear a few bars of the first study, with its Brahmsian parallel sixths, or of the last study with its undisguised Wagnerian progressions, to realise that the composer was immersed in German Classical and Romantic music almost as much as in Chopin. The second and third studies suggest yet another influence. They are remarkably close in detailed phraseology to the tenth and eleventh of Scriabin’s Op 8 studies—so close indeed that it is tempting to suggest that Szymanowski may have modelled his pieces on Scriabin, though there is no direct evidence of this. (It was the third study, incidentally, which Paderewski played all over Europe in the early years of the century, achieving a measure of recognition for the young composer. Szymanowski himself had mixed feelings about such instant success. ‘It is no good thing’, he remarked wryly, ‘to write one’s Ninth Symphony at such an early age.’)